The losers, however, have to start their promotion bid again from scratch in August.

And that’s why Karanka’s mantra since eliminating Brentford in the semi-finals has been today’s winner-takes -all showdown isn’t just another game.

“The players have to know it is not a normal game,” he said. “In the league, you can lose one game and win the following three or four games and recover the points. “Today, it is 90 minutes playing for one year. For that reason it is more of a game.

“All of the players know how important this is,” he added.

“It was a surprise for me after the game against Brentford that Grant Leadbitter and Albert Adomah; both of them should have been very, very excited about winning, but both of them were thinking about the final.

“I was surprised because when you win a game like that, maybe you are thinking about the Premier League, but they knew perfectly where they were at.”

Karanka took charge of Boro almost 18 months and he has been surprised how much progress the club have made in that time.

He recently revealed that his target when appointed was to achieve promotion in two-and-a-half years, so he’s well ahead of schedule.

That said, he knows how important today’s game is and believes his players are up to the challenge of beating a strong Norwich team.

Looking back, he said: “I couldn’t imagine (we’d be at Wembley) at this stage.

“I always thought that my objective was to play this game, but I couldn’t believe how soon we have got it.

“It’s nice because we are one year earlier than we expected. But the players deserve to play this game and we are ready.”

Boro may have done the double over Norwich this season but Karanka believes that will count for nothing this afternoon and expects a tough game against Alex Neil’s side.

“It was important at the time but I don’t think it is very important now because a final is completely different,” he said.

“They have very good players, most of them have played in the Premier League so we know they are a very good team.

“If we go into the game thinking it will be easy because we beat them twice in the league, we are going to make a big mistake.

“We have to go there thinking they are playing a very good team and it is going to be a very difficult game.”